Colorado State might consider loans for new stadium

Supporters of a proposed new on-campus stadium at Colorado State University have always said the structure would be entirely funded with private money. However, information included in a presentation by the school’s stadium advisory committee suggests the possibility of borrowing money should donations and fundraising efforts fall short.

The language was initially reported by the Northern Colorado Business Report.

At its last public meeting, held on May 30, the committee, co-chaired by CSU athletic director Jack Graham, said that as much as $490 million could be raised to fund the stadium, which would cost an estimated $246 million to build. That money, the committee said, would come from areas like naming rights, corporate sponsorships and donations from a pool of 200,000 alumni and another 300,000 “friends of the university.”

However, there’s also language in the documents that raises the idea of loans of somewhere between $167 million and $270 million being to used to cover any shortfall in fundraising.

CSU’s vice-president of university advancement Brett Anderson told the Business Report that taking out loans represented a “Plan B.” However, even the specter of not keeping a promise has provided ammunition to opponents of the project.

“This is part of how they’ve been shifting sands with this whole thing,” said Deb James, a spokesperson for the Save Our Stadium Hughes group.

Anthony, regarding your comment that “there’s also language in the documents that raises the idea of loans of somewhere between $167 million and $270 million being to used to cover any shortfall in fundraising”, it should be clarified what those numbers represent. Those are not estimates of what CSU wants, needs, or might seek from loans. Rather, those numbers are simply estimates of the amount of financing that could be supported by the stadium revenue streams. In other words, this is just an estimate what is available to CSU, and says nothing about what they actually intend to do or how much of that financing they might actually use. Indeed, if they hit the top end of the range of private donations that’s estimated ($220 million), the amount they’d need to finance would be $246 million (cost of the stadium), minus the donations ($220 million), which is just $26 million. That’d be $26 million in financing, with projected annual revenue of $11-18 million/year to cover the payments.

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